Here’s Something Positive For All Of Us: Sports Are Getting Less Violent

Sports tend to spark a lot
of debate about positive and negative impacts, particularly on our youth. On
the one hand, there are pretty undeniable positive aspects of sports: they can
teach teamwork and cooperation, improve physical health, foster a sense of how
to work toward a goal or pursue a discipline diligently, etc. It’s for these
reasons that a lot of us value having grown up around sports, or that a lot of
parents still want their kids to participate. On the other hand, though, there
are numerous negatives – among them the fact that sports can occasionally
teach, or at least overlook, violence and roughness.

This remains the case today, and in all
likelihood there will always be some degree of this problem in sports. However,
sports are also becoming steadily less violent at the highest levels of late,
which should trickle down to collegiate, recreational, and youth levels – which
in turn is good news for all of us.

For one thing, there is increasing talk
that the NBA is surpassing
the NFL as the most popular
sport in America. The numbers will say that this isn’t going to happen
overnight, but things are at least trending in this direction, and one reason
is the violence of the NFL. While the NBA can certainly be rough on occasion
(and used to be much rougher), it’s nothing next to a sport that’s so violent
brain trauma has become one of its defining controversies. Basketball presents
a safer alternative, and something those concerned with roughness in sports can
more readily embrace and support; it’s good for those of us with these concerns
that the NBA is trending up.

With this said, it’s also worth mentioning that
football too is at least beginning to project a safer image. It’s not uncommon
to hear some analysts or commentators above a certain age lament the days when
players could “really hit each other,” or when the game was played a certain
way. These kinds of comments are ultimately revealing that gradually, through
rule changes, the NFL has become a somewhat less
violent league. Concussions and injuries in general are still major concerns,
but the NFL’s direction matters too, and it’s trending the right way.

The NHL needs to be mentioned here as well,
because it’s the one of the four “major” U.S. sports in which violence has
essentially been encouraged. Fights still happen in hockey, and crowds tend to
love them, but they’re also less common than they used to be, and they’re
rarely allowed to escalate out of hand. At the time of this writing, NHL playoff games are underway for
2019, and if you tune in you’ll likely see little more than minor scuffles.
Generally, the league has nudged things in the direction of more free-flowing
play and fewer outright brawls between players. As with the NFL it’s
incremental progress, but progress nonetheless.

To round out the major sports, the MLB also
appears to have entered an era in which violence and aggression, while not
outlawed, are increasingly scoffed at. In baseball, most of the physical
confrontation and roughness comes from players defending pride and teammates.
For instance, if a pitcher hits a batter with a ball, the batter’s pitcher may
respond in kind, and sometimes this can spark a fight. However, more and more
people seem to view this as unnecessary pageantry that the game could do
without. Just recently a fight in the young 2019 baseball season led to an
article about the “unwritten rules of
overreacting,” a phrase
that casts baseball physical conflicts in a rather ridiculous light.

None of these things mean that violence and
roughness has been or ever will be eradicated in major sports. However, looking
at the American sports landscape this broadly, it’s quite clear where the trend
lines are pointing. Our sports are getting less violent, and it’s about time.

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Hi! I’m Anne Bardsley.

…..Over the years, my work has appeared in Erma Bombeck’s humorwriters.org, Scary Mommy, Better After 50, Midlife Bouldvard, The MID, The WIRL Project, The Island Reporter, and others. I am currently working on my next book, Angel Bumps. See the call for submission tab if you’d like to share a story.

I was celebrating my birthday morning in Passa-Grille, our favorite beach spot. The water was calm. The Paradise Grille was serving breakfast. I inhaled the aromas of bacon and french toast as I sipped my mimosa. If it’s my birthday, there is always a mimosa. I leaned back in my chair and tried to imagine…